Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
Remembering Hiro’s gentle smile
As Hiro Muramoto headed out the door of the Tokyo newsroom last week, weighed down with TV equipment on his way to Bangkok to cover demonstrations, he flashed a smile at a Reuters colleague.
It was, she remembers, a “Hiro” smile. It was gentle, rather than a broad grin, and it showed the 43-year-old was pleased once again to take his expertise on the road to do his job telling the world what was going on.
It was doing that job that cost him his life as he was killed, along with 20 others, during a sudden burst of violence during the protests in central Bangkok on Saturday night.
Hiro was not the gung-ho war correspondent of the movies. He was a careful, loving married Dad of two and a gentle mentor for young colleagues and an expert story teller.
He took his concern for those around him beyond the newsroom to complete two 100-km charity walks (with a third planned this month), raising thousands of dollars for Oxfam along with teammates from Thomson Reuters.
At Reuters for more than a decade and a half, Hiro was witness to many of Asia’s biggest stories. His work brought to viewers around the world the sounds and images of events ranging from Asian financial crises to political protests and the 2002 World Cup.
He was trained and experienced in operating in hostile environments, including the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Philippine military operations against insurgents on Jolo island.
from Afghan Journal:
Taliban demand freedom of speech, condemn ban on attack cover
(Afghan widows in Kabul. Picture by Ahmad Masood)
Afghanistan's Taliban have condemned a government plan to ban live coverage of their attacks, saying the measure was a violation of free speech. For a group that had itself banned television, not to mention music during its rule from 1996 to 2001, that's pretty rich irony.
On Monday, Afghan authorities announced a ban on filming of live attacks, saying such images emboldened the militants who have launched strikes around the country just as NATO forces are in the middle of an offensive. A day later, officials promised to clarify the restrictions, and hinted they may row back from the most draconian measures.
But the Taliban appeared to have been stung to the quick and said that the ban was "an action against the recognized principles of freedom of speech" according to these reports. "By imposing the ban on the coverage of independent news organizations, the puppet government tries to hide its failure in face-to-face fights with the mujahedin in all corners of the country," the Taliban were quoted as saying.
The United States has also expressed concern over the Afghan government's move as have news organisations and rights groups.
u.sarms.should take full control of pakistan to save pak nuclear arms.radheshyam gupta,advocate.
Less content, more Merkel in campaign posters
With two weeks to go before Germany holds an election, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives have unveiled a new set of election posters, depicting Merkel, Merkel, and more Merkel.
Rather than campaigning on the issues highlighted in their election programmes, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) are keeping it simple and hoping to capitalise instead on the popularity of their leader, Germany’s first female chancellor.
“The key question is whether Angela Merkel, who has intelligently guided Germany throughout the crisis, should continue to govern,” said Ronald Pofalla, general secretary of the CDU, at a press conference in Berlin.
“With the new posters, we want to make clear to people that they will only get Merkel again as a chancellor if they vote for the CDU.”
The posters show only Merkel, smiling benevolently against a minimalist black background, and feature slogans like: “We vote for the Chancellor” or “We vote for confidence”.
The latest posters are emblematic of the conservatives’ general campaign, which has focused less on hard-hitting issues such as tax cuts and atomic energy than on popular personalities like Merkel and the Economy Minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg.
On previous posters, Guttenberg and other well-known conservative politicians were shown against a blurry background, alongside vague slogans such as “economy with reason”, “strong families” and “good education”.
German election TV debate: Live 2
10:20 p.m. - My colleagues Dave Graham and Sarah Marsh have been busily keeping track of the debate highlights. Here is their report.
9:58 p.m.- Merkel has also obviously rehearsed her closing speech-let. She gets all those terms in that conservatives want to hear: family, children, parents, grandparents, education and “ensuring jobs.” After a rousing debate, Merkel is back in her “feel-good” campaign-speech mode now: vague. “Together we can accomplish a lot,” she says.
9:55 p.m. – Closing statements: Steinmeier up first and he’s clearly been practicing his little speech. He gets all his buzz words in again about minimum wage, healthcare for everyone, social balance, shutting down nuclear power and expresses his worry about a growing “gap between rich and poor.”
9:45 p.m. They’re getting a bit testy with each about tax cut plans by the conservatives if they get in power with the pro-business Free Democrats. Steinmeier wants to know how, in the face of all the government stimulus spending going on, are they going to pay for that? Merkel responds with growth. “Growth creates jobs,” she said. But Steinmeier has done his homework and shoots back: “How can you finance that out of growth? You’d need to have an annual growth rate of 9 percent to afford that. We’ve never had that much growth.” Merkel insists tax cuts are do-able. “I don’t want to confuse the viewers here with numbers,” she says.
German election TV debate: Live
8:50 p.m. - Steinmeier and Merkel don’t use the informal “du” with ach other, the world has just learned. It might sound like a trivial question but I bet a lot of people will remember Steinmeier’s answer to that unusual question: “We don’t use ‘du’ — that’s not something that I consider necessary in politics,” Steinmeier says.
Jonathan & Diana, I agree with you. Germany and their people love tp tell people what to do. its part of their controlling, overbearing, listen and do genetic makeup. This time, Germany has been saying Schadenfreunde to the US for the last 2 years. the US will be saying this to Germany the next 5 years as Germany’s economy will be held down.Leif Jensen, Germans are not smart. Its all deception. I lived in Germany for 3 years. American universities, companies, health care and government policies are way far advanced than the Bundesrepublic. Hyperinflation will crush the DAX in a year or 2. No Weimar this time around…Merkel should stay in Berlin. Her fathers communist ways are comming to present as you saw with her way of handling Opel. What a step back for Germany. She knows she is useless. There is rampant syping in the culture. Germany will be an Islamic state in 40 years. With the recent pullout of the missles shield in Poland and Czecho, I always said Russia should take back CEE but now, I say, let them take everything back up to the Mosel River (Germany)!
Twittering from the front-lines
Who remembers the Google Wars website that was doing the viral rounds a few years back – a mildly amusing, non-scientific snapshot of the search-driven, internet world we live in?
It lives on at www.googlebattle.com where you can enter two search terms, say ‘Lennon vs. McCartney’ or ‘Left vs. Right’, and let the internet pick a winner by the number of search hits each word gets.
As we reported here – the virtual world has become a real battleground in the ongoing Gaza conflict – with all sides deploying significant resources.
For Israel – where hasbara or PR has often been frowned upon as unnecessary pandering to international opinion that never turns in Israel’s favour anyway – the second Lebanon war underlined the need for a coherent media and PR strategy coordinated at the centre of government.
The post-mortem of the month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006 – known as the Winograd Commission – recommended a centralised approach to hasbara to avoid spokesmen from different ministries, the army or the police telling different or conflicting stories to a voracious local and international media.
Notwithstanding the fact that the head of the new National Information Directorate did not make it to a scheduled interview with our reporter on the story above – as my colleague Dan Williams reported here the strategy certainly seems to be working for domestic consumption.
Sources inside the Israeli government have said they are generally happy with the way the strategy has worked internationally as well despite growing international calls for a ceasefire and increasingly angry protests around the world.
Joe the plumber is right. Journalists are incapable of being unbiased always having some political bias. Apart from that, what soldier wants to rescue journalists who get themselves captured risking their own lives?
Breaking the news in Mumbai – literally
The concept of a televised war was born in January 1991, when news networks reported live on the missiles slamming into Baghdad and millions watched from the comfort of their living rooms as tracer fire lit the sky above Iraq’s capital. A decade later, the world watched in minute-by-minute horror as the twin towers came crashing down in New York.
Now, with the ferocious militant attacks in Mumbai, we have arrived in “the age of celebrity terrorism“. Paul Cornish of Chatham House argues that apart from killing scores of people, what the Mumbai gunmen wanted was “an exaggerated and preferably extreme reaction on the part of governments, the media and public opinion”.
It’s too early to tell if governments will respond with extreme reaction, but the saturation coverage of the drama in the world’s media would suggest that, at least on this level, the killers were successful.
“Almost within minutes, television screens showed harrowing scenes of pools of blood where people had died or been injured, hotels ablaze, Indian army snipers firing at distant targets, and CCTV images of the attackers,” Cornish writes.
Its the people in our country who want such dramatized version of everything. Bollywood and Indian Soaps are the live example. The %age of people looking for quality stuff are kind of less which is not enough for any kind of media to target. I know this because my brother works in media and he says that nobody reads the good reports about things that really matter. Every body is interested in the Masala stuff. What can they do they have a business to run? Its easy to blame the media but do give a thought why they are like what they are?
Violence achieve nothing but lost of lives and more anger. It was indeed a privilege meeting him in the Philippines way back and now I sit back and think if all the work and life we give in the profession we chose are all worth it. I hope the stories that we make can be enough to change the world to what it should be.